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Brander studied as an undergraduate at the Point Grey campus of the University of British Columbia at the UBC Department of Economics, in 1975, which is among the best in Canada; then received an MA (1978) and a PhD (1979) from Stanford University.[1][2] He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Queen’s University from 1979-84 before moving back to the University of British Columbia.[2]

His 1981 paper with Barbara Spencer, Tariffs and the Extraction of Foreign Monopoly Rents Under Potential Entry, won the Harry Johnson Prize of the Canadian Journal of Economics.[3] By 1998, Brander's work had been cited over 1000 times.[4]

Brander and Lewis proposed a duopoly model in which it might be rational for the managers of a corporation to load up on debt, to a degree that would be socially dysfunctional. In the model, management might deliberately incur debts in order to wed its interests to those of the shareholders and pursue with their support a risky low-margin, high-output strategy that in turn may gain market share. This gamble has a chance of success if the other duopolist is low-risk, and would rather leave the market than engage in a price-cutting war. On the other hand, if both duopolists adopt the same approach, though, the result is that they are both worse off than if neither had. Furthermore, that result will have negative social utility—the affected market will resemble the recent airline industry in North America.

Brander grew up in Victoria, BC. His wife is his collaborator, Barbara Spencer, whom he met while they were at Queen's University.[4] He is an ice hockey fan and wrote a mathematical analysis of Vancouver's teams.[1]